An abundance of Johns. A shortage of GOP women.

Your definitive guide to women, politics and power.

Mar 22, 2024 View in browser   By Sophie Gardner POLITICO illustration/Photo by AP Happy Friday! I'm not D.C.-based so I'm missing out on all the cherry blossoms this weekend — so send me your best cherry blossom pics and ideas for this newsletter! sgardner@politico.com If you’re a man named John, consider yourself well represented in the Senate. If you’re a Republican woman? No such luck. There are more men named John or Jon (10) in the Senate than there are GOP Women (nine). It’s a disparity that’s been underlined and bolded by the upcoming race to succeed Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, featuring three men named John; John Thune (R-S.D.), John Cornyn (R-Texas) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) are widely considered to be the main contenders. No women have yet to jump in. The scenario echoes the chaotic race for Speaker of the House last October, where no women attempted to clinch the position — though many expected New York Rep. and GOP conference chair Elise Stefanik to give it a go. Women as a whole are still starkly underrepresented in Congress. But for decades, the numbers of Republican women have lagged severely behind the numbers of Democratic women. There are 15 Democratic women in the Senate to the GOP’s nine, and 91 Democratic women in the House, compared to just 33 on the Republican side. And even when GOP women do make it to the Hill, they usually don’t end up in Congressional leadership. The main problem? As Laurel Elder, author of The Partisan Gap: Why Democratic Women Get Elected But Republican Women Don't, sees it, the issue isn’t biased in the voting base. It’s that Republican women aren’t running in the first place. “When women run they do just as well as similarly qualified men, and that's true for both Democratic and Republican women,” Elder tells Women Rule. “But overall, women don't run for office as much as men. And that’s particularly a problem on the Republican side.” It’s not a talking point many Republicans in Congress are willing to take up — likely because of an aversion to anything that could be seen as “identity politics” — says Emily Cherniack, founder and executive director of New Politics, a bipartisan organization that works to recruit veterans and people from underserved communities to run for office. And, for the same reason, says Cherniack, the party is often unsupportive of organizations devoted specifically to electing GOP women. “Republicans’ philosophy is meritocracy and free market theory,” Cherniack says. “By that design, they're about recruiting the ‘best’ candidate, and the ‘best’ candidate wins. So for them to focus on women or Latinos — whatever population — to them, that feels like identity politics.” In 2018, When Stefanik launched Elevate PAC — usually known as E-PAC — with the goal of getting more GOP women elected, she was met with immediate backlash from the Republican establishment. Then-NRCC chair, Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, called Stefanik’s efforts to boost women running in the primaries “a mistake.” Stefanik clapped back on X, saying she “wasn’t asking for permission.” There are Republican organizations — like VIEWPAC — that work to get qualified conservative women elected to Congress, but they don’t nearly secure the same funding as their Democratic counterparts, like EMILYs List. Kathy Barnette, who ran for Senate in the 2022 Pennsylvania GOP primary against Mehmet Oz and recently worked on Vivek Ramaswamy’s presidential campaign, says she would support a group that specifically helped Republican women get elected — as long as they were “the right women” and “not just anybody with a uterus and ovaries.” “Have I noticed that there is a lack of representation of the nation in the Republican Party? Absolutely. But I must admit, I don't obsess over it,” she tells Women Rule in an interview. Barnette suggests that the way the GOP establishment decides which candidates to back could be keeping the field majority white and male. “The primary two requirements are: ‘Do you have a high name ID? Because if you have a high name ID, I can fundraise off of that’ or ‘Are you independently wealthy?’” Barnette said. “What I've learned is that [it] really is [about] the ‘picker,’ and the ones who typically pick are the consultants.” But even when GOP Women make it to Congress, they have trouble moving up the ranks. Some of that can be chalked up to the fact that GOP women often don’t have the seniority of their male counterparts — and some of it to the fact that men are more likely to feel qualified for those positions and therefore are more likely to raise their hands, says Kelly Dittmar, director of research at Center for American Women and Politics. But she also thinks that we can’t fully understand the dynamic without seeing what’s going on in closed conversations on the Hill, and she doesn’t expect to see a substantive change any time soon — at least until the strategy to recruit GOP women changes. “Increasing women's political representation and power is not a one-size-fits-all strategy,” Dittmar says. “What we've been doing on the Democratic or progressive side is not working on the Republican side.” POLITICO Special Report Paul Beaty/AP “Democratic governors see IVF following a familiar post-Dobbs pattern,” by Shia Kapos for POLITICO: “Democratic governors say they’ve made their states refuges for in-vitro fertilization treatments — in much the same way blue states did for abortion in a post-Dobbs America.” “Medication abortions increased 10 percent in year after Dobbs decision, study finds,” by Kierra Frazier for POLITICO. “Top New York City mayoral aide accused of sexual harassment in civil lawsuit,” by Emily Ngo for POLITICO. Number of the Week Read more here. MUST READS Ross D. Franklin/AP “Arizona lawmaker says she announced plans to get abortion to underscore out-of-touch laws,” by ​​Jacques Billeaud for the Associated Press: “A pregnant Arizona lawmaker who revealed in a speech at the state Senate that she was planning to get an abortion says she wanted to share with her colleagues and the public the practical effects of abortion restrictions passed over the years.” “Platoon level gender-integration ‘critical’ for Marines, committee says” by Todd South for The Marine Times: “A Pentagon committee has recommended to the secretary of defense that the Marine Corps should train male and female recruits in gender-integrated platoons at both recruit depots.” “Japan’s Labor Market Has a Lesson for the Fed: Women Can Surprise You,” by Jeanna Smialek for the New York Times: “Japan’s economy has rocketed into the headlines this year as inflation returns for the first time in decades, workers win wage gains and the Bank of Japan raises interest rates for the first time in 17 years.” “Women are getting off birth control amid misinformation explosion,” by Lauren Weber and Sabrina Malhi for The Washington Post. Quote of the Week Read more here. on the move Victoria Eastwood is now Middle East news director at the AP. She previously was senior director of Asia coverage at CNN. Stephanie Gadbois is joining Capitol 6 Advisors as VP of government affairs. She most recently was staff director and majority clerk for the House Appropriations Commerce Subcommittee (h/t Playbook).   Follow us on Twitter Sophie Gardner @sophie_gardnerj   Follow us

To change your alert settings, please log in at https://login.politico.com/?redirect=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.politico.com/settings This email was sent to rouf@idiot.cloudns.cc by: POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA Unsubscribe | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service